AfricaPress-Tanzania: TANZANIA’s senior national football team ‘Taifa Stars’ head coach Kim Poulsen says the team must overcome failure to score goals as they face Kenya’s senior national team ‘Harambee Stars’ in a friendly clash in Nairobi tomorrow.
The two teams had met in a first friendly at Nyayo Stadium in the city on Monday and Taifa Stars lost 2-1.
In a monitored interview, the Danish coach said he will work on scoring more goals.
“During the game, we made some defensive mistakes which cost us, but at the same time failure to score turned out to be our other challenge, an aspect we have to work on,” he noted.
He said they played good attacking football in the first friendly clash and in tomorrow’s game they want to continue from where the team stopped.
The coach said he expect Simba SC players to join the team today, noting the situation will give him hope of improving all departments, namely defense, midfield and forward.
He stated: “In our last international friendly clash against Kenya, we will have a different side with different approach and hopefully we will get good results.”
”We want to continue the way we played on Monday, improve the defense, midfield and attacking, we want to play our own game. Put pressure on them, play a passing game and try to create chances,” he said.
The coach has no full house and some of foreign-based players have not arrived for the camp.
Many of the foreign-based players are expected to join the team during FIFA- sanctioned period which is two to five days before an international match.
Taifa Stars are expected to play Equatorial Guinea in the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifiers at the end of this month.
Poulsen insisted that the mission is to see to it Taifa Stars qualify for AFCON finals for the second time in a row.
During the Monday clash, Harambee Stars posted the opener via Erick Kapaito on the 20th minute.
Taifa Stars levelled matters 12 minutes later through Ayoub Lyanga and in the second half Hassan Abdallah netted the winner for the hosts on 59th minute.
In a previous interview, Poulsen disclosed he is happy that his squad is made up of young players and their experienced counterparts, a situation which is giving the team the much needed team balance.
Harambe Stars are coached by Jacob Mulee and they are using the friendly matches to prepare for AFCON qualifiers aganist Egypt and Togo.
